Do you think they noticed?

I wonder this frequently, and have done for many years now.

I’ve always known that I was, well, different. For most of my life this difference didn’t have a name, but my awkwardness in social settings in particular was obvious to me from at least my early teens. I’ve developed techniques over the years to try and disguise the differences, but they don’t always work. People do still notice, from time to time, especially if they meet me more than once.

One of the three women who works at the sandwich shop down the road spotted it months ago. I think she also realises these days that I know she knows, which just seems to make things even more awkward.

What is it that people spot? I guess it’s a number of things: Little or no eye contact, restricted and awkward body language, my lack of chattiness.

With the sandwich shop it’s my predictable sandwich choice too, from a long list of, erm, two types of sandwich that I regularly buy.

Don’t get me wrong – I can from time to time manage chit chat, sometimes quite well, and if I try hard I can do eye contact too. It’s not the default though – it’s not how I naturally interact with people. It’s a learnt facsimile that requires effort to apply.

When people do spot my non-typical behaviour, it tends to provoke one of two responses.

The first of these is suspicion and wariness. This is the usual response, and it’s the one that’s used by the lady in the sandwich shop. I’m treated with a little more caution than everyone else. It’s like she thinks I’m mentally ill, or expects me to do something really odd at any moment and she wants to be prepared for that.

It’s not a pleasant response, but it’s not uncommon. I’m used to it these days, and accept it as normal. That’s just the way people react, and there is nothing appropriate I can do to change this in casual meetings.

The second response is aggression. Thankfully this response rarely occurs. When it does, it’s very frightening to deal with, however:

In my mid twenties, I tagged along with a work friend on a lad’s holiday in Ibiza for a week. There was a group of twelve of us, and I met ten of them for the first time at the airport for the flight out. It wasn’t my thing at all, but that summer I thought I owed it to myself to try something different.

One night, our group got talking to another group of lads who were younger – mostly mid and late teens, I would guess. These lads were very drunk and loud, and the busy bar was hostile to my senses, so I quickly gave up trying to follow all the conversations and disappeared into my own little world watching the flashing disco lights and listening to the bass pounding away in the music.

This was spotted by one of the lads in the other group, who very quickly started to pick on me. “Who do you support?”. “Eh?” I replied, acting aloof. “I said, who do you support?”.

I’d not been listening, and had no context with which to frame the question. The lad was getting agitated now, and was in my face. My jaw dropped, and the world started moving very slowly. My mind went blank. What was I doing here? What had I said to make him react with such aggression? How much had I had to drink? How much had he had to drink? Why was he bearing down on me? Is he going to hit me? Look at the state of his teeth. And finally: What the hell is he asking me about?

Luckily, one of my new-found mates from our group literally inserted himself between us and replied “He supports England, don’t you mate?”. I nodded. Football. Of course.

He backed away, seemingly satisfied with the answer, but also aware, no doubt that I had people who would stand up for me. He couldn’t pick a fight just with me.

He’d noticeably singled out me, and no-one else in what was a noisy bar full of people. I suspect it was very obvious for those who cared to look that I wasn’t fitting in. I wasn’t chatting with people, dancing or noticeably enjoying myself. He clearly saw this as an opportunity to have a fight. I was very fortunate it didn’t turn into one.

My train of thought when threatened that day is typical – asking myself the wrong questions, and in turn not responding quickly just puts me in more danger.

To answer my own question, most people don’t notice I’m different.

I’m quite thankful for that.

In the zone

I’m not in the zone as yet. By the time I finish writing this, though, I most likely will be.

The zone is my blinkered mode of complete absorption in whatever I’m doing. If I’m working on something I enjoy, then getting in the zone comes easily, and without any concious effort on my part. When I’m not working on something of interest to me however, then the zone is nowhere to be found, and work is difficult and I’m easily distracted.

When I’m in the zone, the rest of the world quietly melts away. I stop hearing all the other conversations in the room, which is odd, as I usually subconsciously listen to everything that’s going on around me.

In the zone, all I can see is the task I’m working on. Most of my zone work involves a computer, so the screen and keyboard become the focus of my vision. My mind is focussed too. It walks deliberately through the route needed to complete the task at hand. It thinks a bit ahead, and looks at the options, before choosing one and sticking with that.

A good example of my zone work these days are my blog posts. At the current time parts of all of them end up being written in the zone, as talking about AS is of particular interest to me. I write like I think – very linearly – and these texts tend to get produced in one sitting, without much editing. When I start writing, I usually have a title and a vague idea of where the words will go, but nothing concrete. What you see here is what where my brain takes me, with little post processing.

Time doesn’t exist in the zone. Thankfully this doesn’t usually cause me a problem, because I work quickly and deliberately, and finish what I start. Once the work is complete, the zone fades away quickly. It’s rare for me to lose track of time in the zone for more than an hour or two at a time.

I like the zone. I’m creative there. It’s one of the positive aspects of AS for me, and I invariably leave it feeling satisfied and very positive.

I predicited I’d be in the zone by the time I finished writing this. I was right – I was in the zone by paragraph three.

Are you angry with me?

I never needed to ask this question.

I used to know the answer. If you were angry when you talked to me, then you were angry at me. It was my fault.

This isn’t your usual inferiority complex or some-such at play, however, it’s something else.

I think it’s come from a common AS problem, where you experience one all-encompassing emotion at a time. When I’m happy, I’m happy about everything, regardless of the trigger. If someone makes me angry, then I’m angry with everyone. Perhaps the root of this for me is that I simply don’t tend to see the cause. When I’m happy, I’m happy. When I’m angry, I’m angry. Full stop.

With no other point of reference, I expected everyone felt like this.

Along with the single-emotion-at-a-time trait, there is another trait at play as well. I don’t read non-verbal communications well. I don’t often see your body language, nor your facial expressions, which just gives me your general emotion – if its obvious – and your words to go on.

Thus I’ve gone through life feeling that whatever obvious emotion is projected towards me by someone is both caused by and intended for me.

If you take love as an example, it’s easy to see how this can work. When someone expresses love for you, it’s pretty easy to tell they are doing it, and you know it’s directed at you.

However, when someone is angry whilst speaking to me, I get the same sort of trigger. They are angry at me. It’s my fault. And you know what? It doesn’t matter if what they are telling me is clearly not caused by me, I’ll still feel like it’s my fault, somehow. It must be – they are angry at me.

Other strong emotions can trip me up too, but I think that anger is the one I misinterpret the most.

These days of course, I’m more aware, and I can often see the difference after the event. It doesn’t stop it from happening, or from me acting defensively if you are angry in front of me, however. At least I can now take stock and then apologise afterwards for what may have seemed like an odd response from me at the time.

One emotion

Happy, sad, elated, despondent, angry. I have all the same emotions as you do. However, when it comes to experiencing these emotions, I only ever see one at a time.

When I first started researching AS, I read Tony Attwood’s book The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. For someone with AS, this is a great book, full of insight into the subtleties of the condition. If you don’t have AS, however I doubt you’ll enjoy it, as it’s very dry and clinical.

In it, Tony quotes from a book By Temple Grandin and Sean Barron:

I was in my early twenties before I learned a simple rule of social interactions that opened the door to greater understanding of others: that people can and usually do feel more than one emotion at the same time. It was inconceivable to me, for instance, that someone could be hapy in general, yet furious with a specific incident, etc. – that two contradictory emotions could be operating at once in the same person. (Grandin and Barron Unwritten rules of social relationships, p.255)

I had to re-read this. I couldn’t quite believe it.

People are capable of more than one emotion at a time? That really was news to me. A chill went down my spine, and for a few minutes I didn’t know what to do or say. I just sat there and re-read over and over, to make sure I wasn’t mis-interpreting the words.

When I’m angry, I’m angry. My anger may have been caused by just one person, but the effects are universal – if you get in my way, I’ll be angry with you. That probably rings true for a lot of people – I don’t think it’s that uncommon for anger to get expressed universally, especially if you are enraged.

With me, however, the same goes for every other emotion as well. One at a time, all the time. It’s a bit like the blinkers that people put on race horses, I guess. I gallop off in the direction of my current emotion, but I can’t see the others that are off to the side.

The problem here, of course is that for thirty five years I’ve thought that everyone else saw the world the same way I do. But they don’t, do they?

If you feel frustrated at someone, you don’t feel the whole world is frustrating. Yet for me, that’s exactly how it is.

The momentum of life

Life has a momentum to it.

Perhaps everyone’s life does. Raising a family, working for a promotion at work, striving towards long term goals. All of these give you a momentum in life.

The momentum I’m talking about here is much shorter term than any of these though – it’s the daily momentum of what I’m doing.

Let me explain:

I need to plan. If I don’t, I’m lost. My planning allows me to see what shape the day is going to take.

Once I’ve planned, my day starts to gain momentum. I know roughly where I’m going, and what I need to do to get there. I have my to-do list with me, and I know what I’m going to get done.

The problem comes for me when plans change. They often do, of course – that’s just the way life goes. Most people would take this in their stride – they would quickly rejig their mental plan of what they need to do, and then just get on with it. Not a biggie.

I find this difficult. My momentum makes me want to keep going along the path I’d previously decided upon. I struggle mentally to break the momentum. It takes time, and effort on my part.

You can almost see this in action, if you change my plans.

You’ll first see me annoyed. I will likely try to persuade you not to change the plan. I’ll make suggestions about how we could do your change of plan later.

If this fails, I’ll agree to your change of plan, and I’ll then go quiet. I’ll probably look down hearted. Inside I’ll be performing that mental struggle. It can take a while. During this time, I won’t be part of your change of plan. I may however be with you – driving to the supermarket to pick up groceries perhaps – but mentally I’m back down at home or work, trying to stop my train continuing down the track it was told to take this morning.

If you know me, you’ll probably notice the silence and lack of interraction. If you don’t, you probably won’t – I’ve learned enough over the years to at least partialy disguise what’s going on.